Contaminants in honey: an analysis of EU RASFF notifications from 2002 to 2022

Honey is regarded as natural and healthy. However, a variety of contaminants could be present in the areas of production. The study aimed to identify the top hazard categories in Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) notifications for honey from 2002 to 2022, taking into account the notification year and type, country of origin, notifying country, risk decision, and actions taken. All RASFF notifications were processed in Pivot tables using Microsoft Excel. Out of 388 notifications for honey in the last 21 years 309 (79.64%) concerned the unauthorized residues of veterinary medicinal products hazard category, followed by adulteration/fraud (5.15%), foreign bodies (2.83%), pesticide residues (2.58%), and poor or insufficient controls (2.58%). China was the most frequently notified country of origin (25.77%), followed by Turkey (6.44%), Ukraine (6.19%), Argentina (6.19%), and Bulgaria (5.67%). Germany was the most frequently notifying country (16.49%), followed by the UK (16.24%), Spain (13.40%), Italy (10.82%), and Belgium (7.99%). Among all notifications, 22.68% were alerted and 12.37% were border rejected. The notification frequency (%) and mean concentration ± standard deviation (SD) (μg/kg) of the most frequently reported contaminants in the honey were as follows: chloramphenicol (25.26%, 172.10 ± 827.92 μg/kg), followed by streptomycin (12.11%, 104.94 ± 209.44 μg/kg), sulfathiazole (9.54%, 52.31 ± 52.62 μg/kg), tylosin (4.90%, 9.03 ± 11.23 μg/kg), and sulfadimidine (4.64%, 254.99 ± 587.00 μg/kg), respectively, due to their application by beekeepers to control infectious diseases of bees. Strict restrictions must be put in place to reduce the risk posed by these contaminants in honey.